Monthly Archives: May 2013

I have been trying to sort out those quilts for LillyBo, a I’ll be taking them off to the WOYWW crop tomorrow. First, the labels – I had been cutting up some old shirts for a project and was looking at the bits I was cutting off, and…

They are small and seem to work pretty well – as these all had the bindings completely stitched they had to be top-stitched, but for future ones I can sew them in under the binding stitching, I think:

Now, I ended up carrying through with my original plan which was to make them all nto “pillows” because I like the fact they could do double-duty then, for in the car, or in the hospital. All made with fairly cuddly fabrics – polar fleece, terry towelling and flannel…

I am doubting that I will be able to get all the quilting done on the in-progress one before tomorrow, but then I guess there is an excuse for JoZarty to meet me for a coffee on her routine travels. . . .

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Hard to believe it’s been that long! I’ve been doing WOYWW since November of 2009, which is just a bit after it started, and have loved it every week. The regular snoop around desks all over the world has been fun, inspirational, and motivational. As I’ve said before, taking part in WOYWW also resulted (combined with the fluke of auto-fill of addresses in email systems) in me becoming part of the Ludgershall crop, which is another bright spot in my scrapping life. All in all it has been, and continues to be, just the most fun.

But what you really want to see is WOMW so here it is – I am working on the photos for the little mini-book from yesterday. I decided I would use photos of the kids together, and slice them in half, if I could, so the full photo covers the “pages” – a change from the Concertina mini I showed, from yonks back. I was actually surprised at how quickly I was able to find photos that worked!

Careful cutting between the figures is what is needed:

And you can see that lots of photos work well enough. Aren’t they just so sweet?

They will fit the pages perfectly with just a bit of space for maybe a quote and some flat embellishments…

With luck, after visiting desks today, I’ll manage to get it if not done, then at least nearly done. I’m excited – it’s been too long since I did a proper scrapping project!

So there you go – marking four years of desk-hopping with hopefully many more to come! Looking forward to the 2nd annual WOYWW crop this weekend and meeting up with lots of desk-owners for a day….

Happy WOYWW!!

ATCs: Try though I might to get more done, I am stuck at the special one for the official swap and 5 additional ATCs. Leave in your comment that you want to swap and I’ll sort it out with you via email. Most people who comment have their email in their “form” so you shouldn’t have to add it in the public comment text.

And ARRGGHH! It’s infuriating, and speaks to Julia’s comments on commenting and how difficult it has become, that I am unable to comment on her blog as Open ID is not supported, only Google log-in will allow you to comment. Woke up with a jolt at 4:34, unable to go back to sleep, played solitaire for ages, then when WOYWW popped up no Mr. Linky. Didn’t this happen last year for the 3rd birthday too? It’s like it KNOWS we are all waiting on it and decides to have a glitch to make us crazy…..

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There is an interesting thread on UKScrappers about re-discovering things in your stash and bringing them to your current scrapbooking. It got me thinking, as posts often do, about my stash. So I decided to revisit a few things. First, a little concertina minibook I made (actually, I made a couple of them) that is based on interlocking accordion folded strips.

I did like it a lot, but always felt that the thin photo strips and the very narrow “pages” could be improved upon. I think I have done so. For a start, it only uses a single 12 x 12 sheet of cardstock and scraps of patterned paper or card. Now to be fair, it doesn’t hold nearly so many photos as the concertina one, but I think it’s perfect for a small book for a particular friend, or your child’s BFF or even for the child and each Grandparent. You’ll see how that works perhaps tomorrow. Today, I’ll just outline the construction.

1. Cut a 12 x 12 sheet of heavy weight cardstock in half, so you have two 6 x 12 inch strips. I opted for a neutral sort of base, but I could easily have done this with one Pink and one Blue strip, as my book is of my boy and my girl and the ME and YOU.

2. The scoring is a little tricky, so read the instructions first before you take off!

I’ve tried to make it easy, rather than getting into minute fractional measurements. I hope it is all clear. You will actually be scoring and cutting two IDENTICAL pieces.

FOR BOTH PIECES:

score at 1/8th inch shy of 1 1/2 inches

LINE UP SCORE LINE with 3 inch line, score at 1/8th inch shy of 6 inches

LINE UP SCORE LINE with 6 inch line, score at 1/8th inch shy of 9 inches

LINE UP SCORE LINE with 9 inch line, score at 1/8th inch shy of 12 inches

I realize this photo is perhaps too dark to really see, but I’m hoping the faint score line is clear enough.

The reason for this method is to ensure you have equal sections (or rather three equal sections and two that are the same and equal 1/2 the larger section) AND a small flap for attaching at the sides. Like so:

3. You can see the sections are now creased, M{ountain}, V{alley}, M, V, M. Again, both the same. I originally was concerned over trying to make the “right” side of the cardstock on the outsides but to be honest, 99.9% of it is going to be covered so I figure it really doesn’t matter enough to have to work thru two different instructions when this way is easier. Just snip the flaps, or not, as you prefer. I did.

4. Cut slits in the middle of each FULL sections (3 total, on each strip) from the top edge down,3 inches long. Leave the smaller end sections alone. Lay them on top of each other, like so:

5. Flip the top strip over and up, so the slits are in the middle:

6. Flip the top strip over and to the left, so the flaps are on either side:

7. Interlock the strips then add adhesive to the flaps and join at the side:

The body of the book will be collapsible, like so:

I think you could use the same idea for a card, rather than a minibook….

8. Now you will have the base of the book ready – cut two cover sheets, 3 x 6 inches, from matt board. You will be joining them perhaps differently to how you might expect, to make sure both sides get an equal number of “pages,” and you will want to decorate them before sticking them, but this is the general idea:

With that done, I also decided to revisit some very old stash, one of the earliest SEI collections, a simple colour-blocked design that I think will work quite well with the idea for the photos…but more on that tomorrow. DD is off school this week so there is much to do!

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I have folder full of the working files for all my printables. I find that for my use especially, I often want to alter them slightly (change the size, change the colour, etc) and it is far easier to use the raw info than to re-make something or edit the PDF.

Anyway, I was thinking on that fact, and it got me thinking about using things I had to hand to create something new, rather than altered, and how easy it might be. So I opened a handful of things – my file I call MONTH MASTER, that contains every possible combo of calendar month layouts. This is less than it sounds LOL! – remember I’ve said before that there are only 7 possible arrangements, one with the month beginning on each day of the week. I make them with 1 to 31, with 00 filling each empty space in the grid, then delete the days as needed for, say February. I allowed myself one new thing, so went to The Graphics Fairy to look for something new. I wanted a round frame that was very ornate. I found one I really liked, from back in 2010, but it was oval. Humm..

I thought I knew I wanted to use the circular month idea. The first thing I did was test that. After editing the graphic to remove the background, and filling in any areas that needed it (I think you can kinds see the pen circles – in those areas the background was showing thru so I just had to fill them in) I tried just setting the size without constraining the proportions. It was OK, but it def. LOOKED stretched.

Maybe more so here? It seems almost … melting, IYKWIM!

I’d be interested in opinions – I decided against using it stretched, but should I have carried on?

What I DID do was reuse the backgrounds from the printables, and the new graphic, and the Month Master blocks, and came up with this:

It took me about 90 minutes, but much of that was wasted in fiddling with the graphic and checking out other font choices. But putting it all together from the core elements was actually pretty quick, and more click-copy-centre-layer blah blah blah 12 times.

Anyway, that’s me for Sunday. How sad is it that the sun is shining and the breeze mild, and all I am thinking about it getting the laundry out on the line? DOH!

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I have been wanting to do something more with my big fat numbers. I found a (not free) font that I think works well with Pompadour (free) and made this set with some common number related quotes. I think I am right, that Yes Please is only a digital kit (?) but I loved the colours so I’ve made them as both a set of PNGs (1 to 5 and 6 to 0) and as a PDF for printing. That seemed sensible.

4-eyes – glasses is obvious, but maybe two kids looking at something intently?

5 senses working overtime – kids at Disney or the beach, or an amazing nature scene

6th sense – probably needs journaling to explain, but what about playing sports, if they are super good at it? Like they have a 6th sense for the goal, or basket, or bat to ball?

Lucky 7 – I can only think of obvious ones, like winning a contest or 7th birthday!

Behind the 8 ball – playing pool is obvious, but what about caught in the act misbehaving?

9 lives – cats is obvious, but maybe getting another chance at something? How about the SATs, or late admission to Uni?

0 tolerance – anything that gripes you (kids messy room, chaos after DH leave someplace in a state, that sort of thing)

If you have more ideas, do feel free to add them as a comment!

I have been sadly neglecting my quilting. I really need to finish the circles and don’t have that much left to do, but I seem to have gotten into making printables at the moment. Time to step away from the Mac, I think. Happily, the house and my room are both very tidy, but I still have a gazillion things on the go and commitments that can’t be ignored.

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This one WAS a struggle. I found a really cool (what I thought was a) font called MOOD TYPE. It wasn’t till I started working with it that I found this little bit of info:

Note: This is an eps font for display font purposes only, at the moment. There are no PostScript or OpenType versions available.

What that means is it doesn’t act like a font. I opened the .eps file and had to convert it to a PDF for editing, then un-group it and re-group each letter to include all the parts (like the O, which consisted of the surrounding circle and the little X in the middle) then create the words using all the aligning tools and spacing tools.

I coloured them to match Sea Foam, and placed them on a 6×4 gridded background. I went with that size because over the last week or so I have seen more than one comment on various PL posts complaining that there are not enough cards in that size – I guess that goes for both printables as well as the for-purchase PL kits.

The last page has only the Saturday card on it, but includes all the day-words, like so:

Why, you ask? well I wanted to revisit something I’ve done before that I still think is both cute and useful. If you cut the words as strips, they can be added to blank areas of your photos, if you aren’t keen to waste a slot in your divided protector:

They can be wrapped and stuck at the back for portrait orientation, but will need to be stuck to the front of the photo and trimmed at the sides if you want them to cross a landscape oriented photo.

And just a little trick for you now. I was a little frustrated because my guillotine trimmer only goes up to 5 inches. I seem to need to cut 6 inches a LOT, and I hate having to drag out my larger trimmer to do that. So I cut a piece of matt board and stuck it to the top, away from the actual cutting area. Like so:

I measured it from the blade, so it is exactly 6 inches. If I am careful lining up, I can now use my smaller trimmer to cut 6 inches!

As you can see it doesn’t increase the size of the trimmer hardly at all and as it is stuck quite securely, I am not worried about it coming loose if I take it in my crop bag, for example. Cost me nothing and has totally increased the usefulness of my tool.

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I mentioned last week that I was sorting out. I am very pleased with how it ended up. I was able to group things in “zones, so all my stamps and card-y sort of things are in one area, all my arty-farty painty and inky bits in another, and all my scrappy papery things in a third. All my books and mags and DVDs an manuals are on two new bookshelves OUTSIDE of my room, freeing up LOADS of space. A third bookshelf has replaced the very thin one I had on top of a small table – you see, I just KNEW (confirmed by using an actual tape measure – I’m not STUPID!) that the thin bookshelf would fit in what used to be the most useless and frankly messiest spot in the whole room, a catchall for rubbish and haphazard piles of forever-toppling things. Where might that be, you ask?

Yep. Behind the door!

I will share one other organizational doohicky with you before I get to my desk – They are there on top of the drawer units. I have a LOAD of those little trays, with the locking lids – can’t for the life of me recall the make, but they come in little tote-bags that hold maybe six. I hated keeping them in the totes so had, for a long time, just stacked them up. I found some brochure holders in the garage, I think originally I had stickers in them, and lo’ they fit the boxes perfectly. As the boxes are a bit organized (like all gold things, brads, eyelets, those prong-backed things, etc in one, all silver in another etc.) the display shows enough of them that I can see immediately which one to pull out.

I have a couple more of these that I now have all my Nesties in.

My desk, finally:

Another thing I unearthed is the Photo jojo book.

I had shoved a bookmark in the page marking how to make a fish-eye lens with an old pair of glasses. Now, I am not sure I am actually using the right prescription – these just happened to be kicking around and one lens was missing. I think they were DDs from 8 years or more ago. Anyway I am hoping to get to the £ store to get a pair of super-strength reading glasses as they recommend for cheap and try again, because the effect with these was pretty mild – to the point that I see no reason to add the photo, it’s so imperceptible. But I flipped them the OTHER way around and got this sort of concave image. You can see the curving on the lines of the cutting mat.

Weird, humm? Might be something to play with a bit more…..

I have another project on my desk, but it’s giving me a bit of agita, as my Italian Grandpop used to say. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll have it sorted. Unless I get too caught up in YOUR desk, I lose track of time…..

🙂

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I had a comment on the last post asking for blank versions of these. I considered just removing the MONTH names, but thought that they might be more useful if I were to make the area for adding text much bigger. I had to cut up (digitally) the menu graphic from The Graphics Fairy and add some thin lines so I could fill the middle with white but it wasn’t a struggle to do so.

The issue for me has always been getting as many cards on one sheet as I can. Working in A4, which is about 8.25 inches rather than 8.5 like US letter, is the borders that are naturally left by the printer. I *think* I’ve forced it to work, but anyone who cares to test the PDF on THEIR A4 printer and comment to let me know will be very much appreciated.

I printed and measured, and think the will cut to fit PL sleeves.

As ever, feel free to comment if you really want the original ones as blanks. That should only take a moment to sort so if the tiny area for text suits your needs, just say….

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I don’t know what I didn’t think to do this ages ago. Well, that isn’t strictly speaking true. I DID think of it, and even blogged about how to do it (or at least one easy way) here, but I just didn’t follow through for my PL printables. Silly, really, as it is so simple to make them match a collection.

So I took a collection that I like quite a lot (the Sea Foam collection), and changed my Fat Numbers set to match. Perhaps it wasn’t the BEST one to pick, in that there are really not enough different colours (not like Cobalt, for example, which has more than enough choices) but summer is coming (I hope) and I am hoping for sun, sea and sand at some point. There is also a yellow to make 6 unique colours. I could have done one black and one white, as there are items in the collection that are B&W, but decided against it. What do you think?

The PDF has 0 – 9 – that is a change from the original, which was just 1 – 9.

I think I will look to the most recent collections when making future printables. I know that PL is all a bit of this&that, and most people probably don’t make a great effort to really Match things totally, but it feels like having anything I make tone with the official collections might be worth doing. Yes?